With Bouquet And a Wave, Boudin Is Free 22 Years Later

Kathy Boudin, the 1960's radical and fugitive, walked out of prison into the brilliant September sunshine this morning, 22 years after her involvement in an armored-car robbery that left three dead.

Appearing relaxed but not smiling, Ms. Boudin turned around in the parking lot at 8:45 a.m. and waved a slow farewell to her friends among the inmate population, who were watching her departure from inside the prison.

In one hand, Ms. Boudin held a sprig of dried roses from a bouquet given to her a decade ago upon her mother's death, her lawyer, Leonard I. Weinglass, later explained. She then climbed into a green sport utility vehicle and drove off. Ms. Boudin had left the prison only twice before, for doctors' appointments.

Mr. Weinglass said today that Ms. Boudin was ''beginning her adjustment in new surroundings with a few close friends.'' Earlier this week, he said that she would not give any interviews. ''Her feeling right now is that she wants to resume her private life and do her work in a quiet manner,'' he said.

Her release stirred anew the emotions that have simmered since the 1981 Brink's holdup in Rockland County claimed the lives of two police officers and a Brink's guard in a last gasp of Vietnam-era radicalism. By pleading guilty in 1984, Ms. Boudin avoided a lifelong sentence.

Ms. Boudin's supporters were closely guarding her new place of residence, after a previous plan to move in with friends in Brooklyn fell through. Parole officials needed to verify that Ms. Boudin would have housing and employment before her release.

She has accepted a job offer from the St. Luke's Hospital H.I.V./AIDS Center to create programs for women who are infected with the virus that causes AIDS, said Jim Mandler, a spokesman for the hospital, which is on the Upper West Side. Ms. Boudin, 60, worked with H.I.V.-positive inmates at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, where she also worked toward a master's degree in adult education. A spokesman for the New York State Division of Parole, Thomas P. Grant, said she would be on parole for the rest of her life, with a curfew and travel restrictions.

Today, friends and relatives of the victims decried her release, while Ms. Boudin's supporters celebrated her freedom.

Standing with reporters and photographers about 150 yards from the prison gates was Brent Newbury, president of the Rockland County Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. ''I can't believe I just watched her walk out of prison,'' said Mr. Newbury, who was 13 at the time of the killings. ''I'm sick to my stomach right now.''

Mr. Newbury is an officer with the Police Department in Orangetown, N.Y., which covers the village of Nyack. That is where two of the victims, Sgt. Edward O'Grady and Officer Waverly Brown, were killed after stopping the getaway van in which Ms. Boudin was riding. The third victim, Peter Paige, was the Brink's guard.

Ms. Boudin has said she was only a decoy whose role was to distract the officers. Supporters of Ms. Boudin have cited her indirect role in the slayings in pressing for an early release. She was first eligible for parole in 2001; the Parole Board approved her third application on Aug. 20.

One supporter, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founding editor of Ms. magazine, said she was thrilled by news of the release. ''She paid a very heavy price for a very foolish move when she was young and idealistic, and she had deep remorse,'' Ms. Pogrebin said. ''I know that, and I know that she has suffered enormously and has been a model prisoner.''

When she was arrested, Ms. Boudin was a fugitive from an explosion a decade earlier in a Greenwich Village town house that the radical group the Weathermen had used as a bomb factory. Ms. Boudin, a magna cum laude graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the daughter of a prominent civil liberties lawyer, also had a 14-month-old son, Chesa, with a co-defendant, David J. Gilbert, who was the driver of the van.

Mr. Gilbert is now serving a 75-year sentence in Attica. Chesa Boudin, 23, graduated from Yale University this year, after being named a Rhodes scholar.